Houdini Tutorial 2 - Doctor Strange Inspired Portals

In this tutorial Moeen will be going through how to create a Doctor Strange-style portal effect in Houdini. It's VEX heavy and can be a lot to take in but we're trying to make it easier for everyone by going through it over at our blog post.
We'll try to keep our next tutorial a little less VEX intense for anybody who is trying to avoid VEX like the plague. But, for now, we'll get you thinking with portals.
The music used in the intro: Charles the First (ft.Clozee) - The Mist
For more in-depth explanation:
www.ninebetwee...
Houdini VEX documentation:
www.sidefx.com/...

[@NineBetween]

Hey everyone, we're back with another tutorial. This one is a bit VEX heavy so we will try to keep our next tutorial more node-based depending on your feedback. If you have any ideas for an effect that you would like to see recreated from a particular movie or from your imagination, then please comment down below and we'll see what we can do!

[@bbsoft546]

well, for me VOP is more complicated than VEX, so i would love to see more tutorials with VEX :)

[@NineBetween]

Great, thanks for your feedback! I also find VEX more intuitive but I come from a coding background, its great to hear from everyone else about their preferences :)

[@DavidUebergang]

Vex for 90% off stuff and vops for adding noises :D

[@NineBetween]

haha, so true. VOPs are a lifesaver when it comes to noise

[@JoaquinPeMM]

i would like to see a "symbiont vemon" effect and how to traansform it to a modeled character

[@christiansanchez7448]

I can not stress how much I appreciate the time and effort put into these tutorials. As someone trying to figure out Houdini it is extremely frustrating to find a lack of well made tutorials on the internet without having to drop hundreds of dollars, thank you all so much

[@NineBetween]

Thanks for the great comment, we really appreciate it. We're just glad that people find our tutorials helpful. I fumbled around a lot when I was initially learning and I feel like there's a type of responsibility to help other people out, especially when Houdini has such a steep and intimidating learning curve.

[@nikolasvennard2285]

This is one of the best houdini tutorials I have seen on youtube extremely clear and easy to follow instructions with good explanation! Thanks keep up the amazing videos!

[@ApprenticeofFazbot]

This is by far one of the most comprehensive and easy to follow tutorials I've seen for Houdini, keep it! You guys are doing great work!

[@NineBetween]

Means a lot, thanks for the feedback!

[@bradstoonz4703]

They used this in the actual movie of endgame for the last scene. And now you made a guy thanks a lot man

[@ricardoloramesquita5990]

Some notes: 1 - When rendering, if the screen is completely black (make sure you have followed the tutorial to a T) try closing and opening the project. I don't know why this is caused. 2 - If your ring is completely grey, in the Shader ATT Wrangle. turn up the Brightness Mult. I dont think he does it on the tutorial but by default its at 0

[@dromeda6066]

its still grey after changing..

[@Nileina]

Some nodes are simple and easily remplaces his vex code. It can help on the last version of Houdini.

[@chxrvey9753]

been learning vex for a couple months now, gotta say this felt good being able to understand and good 80% of what you used and how its done. Really good video overall especially if your new to vex and need confidence in writing it like myself

[@NineBetween]

Awesome to hear, glad you were able to follow along and yeah, it's super satisfying when you can follow along easily and even better when you start to know what the tutorial is going to do before it does it. Thanks for watching and all the best with your learning😁

[@chxrvey9753]

@@NineBetween only issue I’m actually having, is it doesn’t like the colours in mantra and renders it out in grey! Any way tips to resolve it?

[@sjm418]

This is a great tutorial. While i didn't understand every line of VEX i understand the syntax and it was super easy to follow. Thank you so much

[@elvisrocks7236]

Thank you so much for sharing this Dr. Strange Portal effect. Thank you for taking it step-by-step as some tutorials skip steps or go too fast. Cheers :)

[@zevnikov]

Dear maestro. Thank you. An amazing attribute wrangler tutorial with vex logic. It is crazy how houdini can manage attribute flow across all operators. I am looking forward to your next amazing tutorial. God bless you.

[@melong8608]

it was very organized and perfect. thanks for an awesome tutorial

[@jonosvlog9913]

No wondered why I gave up on this tutorial few years ago ........ The maths just killed me. But it makes more sense now tho. Thanks

[@HoudinifxAlfredosanmartin]

really fantastic, there is nothing wrong with the heavy VEX, you can also add some VOP, I loved this tutorial full, good work and good ideas adherent : )

[@NineBetween]

Thanks a lot for the awesome feedback! Perhaps I'll throw in a few VOPs next tutorial :)

[@everyonelivewell]

holly shit!!! i’m gonna watch every sing videos in this channel. thank you for all the tutorials. it helps me a lot for study!!!

[@MaxxSkull]

Hey, very nice and simple tutorial, and good training and explaination for VEX parts thanks a lot.

[@hamidthephysicist6376]

Very interesting channel and tutorial . Thank you so much . I wonder why I have not met this channel before . Please youtube those type of channels that you should suggest to me . Keep it up mate .

[@Jaredvic]

Pretty cool man. An effect idea could be star lords blaster in guardians of the Galaxy 2

[@Carteblanchefx]

Great tutorial, thanks a lot! It would be great to see a tutorial about creating rain, or snow using a particle system.

[@NineBetween]

Thanks for watching! Great idea, I'll mess around with the setup and probably post it here soon.

[@jotenboffen]

I figured out how to animate the circle so it goes from empty to a full circle. You go to the circle node and change the arc type to open arc and then keyframe the right arc angel number from 0 to 360. You might have already figured this out because it was really easy to figure out, but I just wanted to throw it out here

[@brightgarinson3099]

Hey I'm about to try this to see how it looks but I just wanted to say thank you for this info and I appreciate you! Please be available if I have a question.

[@jotenboffen]

Bright Garinson I’m a VFX student at Noroff and even though I’ve been learning about Houdini for a month now, I’m still pretty new to this thing. So I can’t garante you that I can answer all your questions

[@brightgarinson3099]

@@jotenboffen Oh of course not. I understand, I just mean in regards to what you found.

[@brightgarinson3099]

EDIT: I LOVE YOU! NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE, YOU ARE A GODSEND! Thank you so much for the info. I subbed.

[@jotenboffen]

Bright Garinson There’s no better way of saying Thank you than subbing! Thanks alot!

[@purpineapple]

This is a great tutorial, helped me in my simulations class, and will probably impress my teacher, thank you very much :D

[@NineBetween]

haha, glad to help!

[@lawai_macha]

Thank you for such a great tutorial, made my day!

[@NineBetween]

Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it!

[@FrancoisCaffiaux]

Thank you, and congratulation, you are a great teacher!!! The blog is really helpfull, it's a good idea. I really hope you will do another tutorial. May be a patreon !(?)

[@NineBetween]

Thank you for such great feedback! We'll be releasing a couple of tutorials in the coming weeks. As for a Patreon, it's been in the works for a little while but we're working on some more content before we start our Patreon. Thanks again!

[@Waizy]

The portal in the render doesn't have color. I don't get why and can't seem to fix it.

[@yasurandrew]

same bro

[@rockeguitarra]

Nice Tut...You explain so god!!!!!Thanks :)

[@mdsanima]

thank you, very nice tutorial! keep going.

[@brianlitz7588]

Hi, great tutorial, but I am having two issues even after redoing the project once. 1) My render screen is completely black 2) My shader is not showing up at all, even after changing the color. Any help would be awesome, thanks!

[@alvarosantos1456]

Same problem here. Sad

[@3dwithme595]

sir your work is amazing and top notch explanations i wanted to ask you how long it took you to learn houdini ??

[@gnome3d750]

So glad I found this channel. I'm new to Houdini but have been using blender for almost 2 years. This is one of the best Houdini tutorials I've found so far. There is a video by FX Hive called "Krakatoa and 3dsmax - Portal particles effect tutorial" Is there any way you could cover that in Houdini? I can't afford Maya and I've tried to do this in blender but I keep failing. I'd love to learn how to get that effect. Thanks once again for your hard work and look forward to new tutorials!

[@NineBetween]

Hi, glad you're finding value on this channel. Thanks for watching! I also come from a Blender background. Houdini's learning curve is steep but the software can honestly do so much. That type of portal effect could probably be done using a combination of what was shown in my tutorial and some smoke advection. I imagine you would emit smoke from the main ring and then use the velocity to push around particles. If I get a chance I will try to recreate that sort of effect and then put the file up. As for Maya, you can download an educational license just to practice: www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya I'm currently still learning Maya. I prefer Houdini but that's personal preference. To me, Houdini just feels more artistic and open to creativity. Hope that helps a bit, All the best!

[@brightgarinson3099]

@@NineBetween Can you do a pyro advection video?

[@NineBetween]

We actually used fluid advection for our intro clip, we'll be getting around to that after our next 3 or 4 tutorials. We'll be sure to add pyro advection into that tutorial :)

[@Dubnium777]

Hey, this part below is working for me, except that the "wave" does not loop. It just happens once. float timer = 2*@Time-@curveu; @brightness=chramp('timing_ramp',-timer); @N*=fit01(@brightness, 0.4, 0.6); Using Houdini 19.5 btw Cheers and thank you!

[@saku666]

you will need to use the modulo(%) function float timer = 2 * @Time➡%chf('time_inc')⬅ - @curveu; @brightness = chramp('timing_ramp', -timer); @N *= fit01(@brightness, 0.4, 0.6); if you set the 'time_inc' variable to the time you want it to it will return the remainder and you will get it to loop

[@DonquijoteDC]

@@saku666 excellent Tutorial and thanks for adding in the modular function. But I am getting the same issue as @dubnium777, and when adding the %chf('time_inc') it creates a pulsing effect but doesn't affect the normal growing and contracting. Its more like a burst of all normals. Also using 19.5

[@DonquijoteDC]

Also tried out the exact steps in Houdini 18.5 and it works with no issues. So what has changed in the code?

[@DavidUebergang]

Thankyou, solid tute!

[@sirius3171]

hey great tutorial! But my render is only grey, I've double-check my code, made my brightness mult at 1 but it's still render in grey... can you help me?

[@kdkielbro3501]

Very nice, complex but accurate.. Could you do the Blink portal from Xmen? It would be nice to have that as well.. Thanks

[@dongjoonhan3179]

thank you very much! very helpful!!

[@HoudinifxAlfredosanmartin]

Hi, You gave the option to ask some idea, and my interest is to know how to do HUD in Houdini, lines with codes and changing numbers all ultra small. long time ago already I want to add some works in it way in my Houdini's

[@taelongx]

Just curious, but where did you learn the VEX coding from? I'm a CS major, but all this VEX coding is new to me haha xD

[@NineBetween]

Before working in Houdini I did some game development. I was already quite comfortable with coding. When it came to VEX it was a bunch of trial and error and scratching my head while staring at the documentation. It eventually fell into place

[@jimzandieh4761]

Great tutorial, My shader does not work though, I triple checked the every single word you wrote and it seems to work when im in the normal viewport but as soon as I press render it turns black and white.

[@NERFNERDify]

yeah my shader is not working either - I think it might have something to do with version I am in 16.5 and there seems to not be a multiply option over the color ramp

[@NERFNERDify]

so I figured it out- make sure you go into the pricipal shader and make it any color surface tab - I made mine red instead of grey color that is default- for some reason this works and is now reading the ramp

[@ricardoloramesquita5990]

@@NERFNERDify Is that the Base Color?

[@NERFNERDify]

@@ricardoloramesquita5990 Yes I believe so- it has been awhile lol--

[@Djreversal]

Great tutorial.. Any way to show how to send this information over to smoke / fire source possibly??

[@RavageStudio]

I have no idea what im doing wrong, but the it wont change color based on my color ramp, its stays only grey like the material.

[@Ams__-lh2pf]

Lønne Studio Same thing with me everything works good up until I go to the render view and then it stays grey and doesn’t go over to the colors I added. Maybe because I’m using the apprentice version 🤷‍♂️

[@RavageStudio]

@@Ams__-lh2pf I managed to fix it, be sure to do everything he does. It was one push of button that fcked it for me xD an paste the code from his website, it variates from that of the video.

[@Ams__-lh2pf]

Lønne Studio oh ok had no clue that he had the code posted on his website

[@hardyk1]

Amazing!

[@psychedlicavfx6646]

Awesome tut and its far from being "VEX heavy". If anything its just basic maths and few "gotchas" typical in VEX, maybe any programming language.

[@DIGITOONZ23]

why dont you used pointvop nodes instead of attribute wrangle

[@TulsiSv]

Can you make a tutorial on the portal effect from Supernatural? It's not as sparky as this one

[@StephaneSOUBIRAN]

Thank you !

[@cijijames]

Awesome tutorial.. But cannot get the shader in the render port.. the clr_ramp not showing in render.. could you please help... am a novice to houdini... using v17 apprentice

[@NineBetween]

Hi, it might be because of the ramp at 12:59 Make sure that the brightness ramp has been created. The color ramp will only work if we have values set for the following attributes: @emitint @emitcolor Make sure that both of those values are non-zero and then when you apply the principled shader, it should work. Hope this helps :)

[@ricardoloramesquita5990]

Hey. I seem to have the same problem. have u found a fix?

[@marwans4018]

the first link you have in the description doesnt work

[@rahulrawat952]

i was looking for more vex explanation but the site link is not working .. :(

[@magiono2333]

Hi, the link for explaination seems to be broken. Can u fix that? I really want to learn about it

[@kaupasi]

hey, awesome tutorial, but im having a problem, for some reason the shader color doesnt render for me, its black and white when I render, I walked through the entire process of making this effect three times and rechecked all of the code and for some reason I'm getting it all in black and white. I can't even imagine whats the problem, maybe some of the mantra settings? or the material settings? maybe something they updated in the houdini itself? if you need any more info of my code or something just let me know, just really want it rendered in color

[@NineBetween]

Hi, the only thing that comes to mind is what I mentioned at 23:25 where you have to have 'v@' or else it only gives you black and white. If that isn't it then feel free to send your .hip file to me at [e-mail]

[@RavageStudio]

Turn up your Mult in the Shader wrangle

[@derrinweb7077]

hello sir, how to render with particle doctor Strange portals please upload tutorial , i was render but only circle are render in exr file, so please help me.

[@aamg1992]

i wanted to check your vex indeep. but i cant find antything on your website..is it there yet?

[@semideo17]

Hi, great turotial. This is my first time using Houdini and I'm wondering after I've completed the animation if I can export it as a .avi or quicktime video?

[@NineBetween]

Hi, thanks for watching! If you render to MPlay, which you can find in the 'Out' network next to 'Render to Disk', you'll find an 'Export' option under 'File' inside MPlay. There are a few options there. Otherwise, you can export a sequence of images and composite it in another software package. I use Fusion9 which is great. There is a free option and is perfect for compositing.

[@semideo17]

When I go to export it only comes up with Export Movie Help and no option to actually export a video file.

[@alkaine6706]

Great tutorial, very clear, even for someone that comes from 3D art ^^ However I get an error in the edit string at 9:09. I typed it all the same as you, but I get : Warning: Errors or warnings encountered during VEX compile: /obj/geo1/MOTION/attribvop1/snippet1: Syntax error, unexpected integer constant, expecting ';'. (4,36). Error: Vex error: /obj/geo1/MOTION/attribvop1/snippet1: Syntax error, unexpected integer constant, expecting ';'. (4,36) Failed to resolve VEX code op:/obj/geo1/MOTION/attribvop1 Unable to load shader 'op:/obj/geo1/MOTION/attribvop1' . What am I doing wrong ?? (sorry I have 0 knowledge of coding XD)

[@alkaine6706]

Oh my bad I found the problem, the devide from my numpad doesn't work haha

[@NineBetween]

Haha, coding is great until a sneaky semi-colon finds a way to not be where its supposed to be. All the best with your coding endeavors and thanks a lot for watching :)

[@SusieSu321]

cannot get the same effect following the tut. the brightness wont wave and the color wont work. I think it's because of the different versions of houdini. carry on to the next video.

[@NineBetween]

Hi Susie, the issue is because of a change to the way that ramps work inside of houdini as of H19. They no longer reset at each whole number, but rather, they clamp at 0 and 1. Any numbers outside of this range give the closest value between 0 and 1. The solution is to use the frac() function on the values that drive all of your ramps. This will take only the fraction and ignore the number in front of the decimal point. I hope that helps. If you need further explanation, please let me know

[@SusieSu321]

@@NineBetween Thank you so much. ;) I will redo this ring and try again!

[@Retr0_]

sorry but i need a further explanation 😅@@NineBetween im new to all this vex stuff, i tried implementing it myself into your code but im doing something totally wrong I think and can't get it to work.

[@locm4294]

Hi, nice tutorial but i have a question, why do you use @Time on 5:50 and not $FF or $F, which i have tried but it doesnt work, why does it work with Time and not with Frames? I would be glad if you could answer me because i can not understand it :/ Thanks for your help.

[@NineBetween]

Hey, so there are two coding languages in Houdini; Hscript and VEX. VEX is what is used in wrangles, and many other places in Houdini. It's the common @ notation that you see. Hscript uses the $ notation. However, Hscript is being phased out of Houdini to a large degree. So, when working in wrangles, we use VEX. Both Hscript and VEX can access global variables such as time ($T/@Time), frame number ($F/@Frame), etc. We use @Time because we are in a wrangle. And we use time instead of frames because of the value that each one equates to. Time is 1/24th of the frame value by default (24fps) so we use that as it is easy to get an idea of the speed of a range of 0-1 (seconds) as opposed to 1-24 (frames). Sorry if that is a bit convoluted, maybe someone else can clarify my response a bit better. Hope that helps!

[@locm4294]

@@NineBetween well thanks so much for trying to clarify it to me. I'll try to start using @Time instead of $F in some projects and i guess ill see the difference. Thanks so much for your time, really apreciate it.

[@brightgarinson3099]

Hey I have a problem, please I need help. So I followed what you said and everything is fine in the video so far. The problem is I wanted to use the portal for a shot so I didn't translate it like you do on the z axis. Doing so results in the particles going into the circle which defeats the look in the shot. The creators of the Dr. Strange portal said they used metaball forces to keep the sparks from entering the circle. Would you have any knowledge of knowing how I can keep the particles from entering the circle?

[@NineBetween]

Hey, the quickest solution I could come up with was using a sop solver inside of the popnet to reverse the velocity of any particles that fall into the center. If you could PM me your email address, I'll send you the .hip file.

[@DavidUebergang]

At 10:00, is that cross product...? The math doesn't make sense with that... (1,0,0)x(0,1,0) = (0,0,1) ??

[@NineBetween]

Hi, because we're working with vectors and not scalar values, the math isn't quite as straightforward as multiplying. The general idea is that if we cross A*B where A=(1,0,0) and B=(0,1,0) then: Cx = (Ay*Bz − Az*By) = (0*0 - 0*1) = 0 Cy = (Az*Bx - Ax*Bz) = (0*0 - 1*0) = 0 Cz = (Ax*By - Ay*Bx) = (1*1 - 0*0) = 1 and we end up with C = (0,0,1). I'm not a mathematician or anything, that's just how I understand it, so my apologies if its wrong but hopefully that clears it up a bit :)

[@akashpandya2081]

Every thing was going on greatly until you said duplicate the pop source @16:00, can you please explain that part ?

[@NineBetween]

Hey, so you can hold 'Alt' then you click and drag on a node to duplicate it. It is the same as copying and pasting the node, I just used the shortcut, hope that answers your question :)

[@akashpandya2081]

@@NineBetween 😃 it did. Thank you so much...

[@EtienneLingner]

Hey nice tutorial do you know how I can 3D track a video and import the data to Houdini. I have test it with syntheyes and with these software it will export as script and if I execute the script it will place a camera with point cloud in the scene that won’t move. Sry for my English I’m from Germany. 3D track to Houdini

[@Gamess0000]

it depends on the type of shot normally with after effects you can do it, just do the render and the 2d tracker should do the trick, 3d track is only neccesary when the camera has more complex movements

[@EtienneLingner]

Ok thanks:)

[@MovieFactory]

Etienne Lingner ich benutze syntheyes auch und es funktioniert mit dem Script. Du musst nur in den cameraview gehen. Die punkte sollen sich nicht bewegen, sondern die kamera

[@brightgarinson3099]

You just need to import the image sequence in your camera tab under view-background image. DON'T use after effects if you want accurate tracking. If you have Syntheyes, use it. I'm trying to get it myself.

[@annamalai4892]

how to view this as like render view

[@delrio_films]

can you send me the code of the minute (4:48)

[@matindi]

You should look for a job at marvel

[@ghost62370]

marvel is not a 3D studio

[@igormota4297]

my houdini dont have resample

[@AlexandrNewman]

Hi, great tutorial , thank you for creating it. I personally like node-based workflow, but VEX is fine too. Lightning from Warcraft movie would be amazing to see for the next tutorial : kzbin.info/www/bejne/e3SnfJ2JqdZre8k (2:14), when medivh starts casting. Procedural system that has a source of origin and branches from it that touches objects around or similar. Thank you.

[@NineBetween]

That's a great idea for a tutorial, I completely forgot about that scene. That's going straight to the 'to-do' list. Thanks for bringing it up and thanks for watching!

[@lemmonsinmyeyes]

The website is down?

[@NRodriges]

I could not do it

[@awesomeeditor-rais3400]

how to render to png ?

[@AmberGurung8]

at the end write.png